


Bad Boys

by VulpesVulpes713



Series: Fictober 2018 [13]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fictober 2018, M/M, delinquent au, klance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 17:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16580873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VulpesVulpes713/pseuds/VulpesVulpes713
Summary: Prompt:“You knows this, you know this to be true.”





	Bad Boys

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of a collab? I'll post the rest once it's done.

It’s not easy, being a badass.

It takes concentration: a devotion to neglecting the rules. It requires leather jackets to be worn despite the hottest of days, and ripped jeans sported in the middle of winter.

It asks patience-to learn how to perfect eyeliner, and craft that exact hairstyle of ‘flawlessly unkempt’. There’s the walk, the talk, the stares and the smiles that attract the ladies and make the teachers roll their eyes in disgust.

It means not caring about what others think, or at least  _pretending_ not to. That feigned ignorance to people’s opinions is a skill honed from years of practice, and still Lance finds he struggles with it at times.

Because he wasn’t raised to be a badass. That’s just the role he’d decided he fit best. 

No one cared about him when he was teacher’s pet in elementary. Hardly anyone laughed at his class clown jokes in middle school. And for the first year of high school he was practically invisible. He knew nobody. And nobody knew him.

The only difference was they didn’t seem to want to change that. Lance, on the other hand, was desperate. So he’d switched schools, gone and lived with his aunt and uncle with a fib to his parents about wanting to focus on his studies.  

And he had. He  _did._  He wasn’t foolish enough to lie to his mom and dad. But what they didn’t need to know was how he dressed, or where he hung out. They didn’t need to see him slip into this persona he’d decided to try out. He wasn’t even sure at the time if he was going to go through with it, until he’d found that leather jacket in the back of his uncle’s closet.

That had been the catalyst to it all: the trigger to yielding to that teenage angst.

Lance was a badass. No one could deny it. And after only a semester he’d managed to carve out the title for himself.

He maintained his grades by studying outside of school, though he skipped class whenever possible to hang out at the skate-park. And if he couldn’t skip he’d make a nuisance of himself to maintain that image-resting his feet on the desks, texting during lectures, falling asleep without a care. The teachers hated him for it, but they couldn’t get mad. His grades were high enough to keep them begrudgingly accepting of him.

Still, they made it clear they weren’t amused by his antics, but that only helped his case.

It only made him more badass.

And with that sort of endorsement, the students sort of took it upon themselves to start spreading rumours about him. He didn’t smoke, but people thought he did. He didn’t steal cars for fun, but when confronted he would only shrug and laugh. Anything that was said about him, no matter how untrue, would never be met with denial.

_“Didn’t Lance have sex on the bleachers in the gym?!”_

Sure, why not.

_“Wasn’t it Lance who broke into the art room and painted a giant dick on the blackboard of the computer lab?”_

Crude, but okay.

_“Oh, haven’t you heard? Lance skipped an entire week of school just for fun! Or maybe it was juvie..”_

Yeah right.

_“That Lance guy? Stay away from him. He’s bad news. A delinquent if there ever was one.”_

And he would smile to himself, winking at whoever said it to entice them. Not denying, but not correcting either.

Because he was a badass, and those were the sacrifices he had to make.

And no one really listened to the rumours anyway, because when it came to dating, well…he’d done his fair share. People were obsessed, to the point where being seen with him was treated as taboo, but still sought out. He was a status, a goal. Some had even taken to calling him the Tailor, for reasons Lance wasn’t exactly proud of.

But his relationships never lasted long anyway. He couldn’t let people close. They would find out the truth if he did, and that would ruin everything.

Because the hardest part of being a badass was pretending he liked it. It was exhausting. It felt false. But people respected him for it. They feared him. They were in awe of him.

And on nights where he couldn’t sleep-kept awake by this lingering hollowness of not knowing who he truly was-he would tell himself over and over that it’s just temporary. 

_Just make it through high school, and you can change again._

_It’s just for now, to be seen. You’re not a bad person. **You know this,**_ he would whisper in his head, clenching his fists beneath his pillow to ward off the tears.  ** _You know this to be true._**

He was a good person, but he was also a badass, and that was all he let people see. That leather jacket kept him from being invisible, something Lance didn’t know he feared so much until he was threatened with it.

Threatened by someone named Keith. The  _least_  badass name of all time.

Seriously.

_Keith?!_

And yet, that  _Keith_  had nearly ruined it all. Three years of Lance holding the title of biggest bad boy at his school. Three years of painstaking acting, slipping deeper and deeper into his role, wondering if he’d ever crawl his way out. But it was three years of attention, even if it wasn’t always positive. Lance didn’t care about that though. He just wanted to be seen.

It’s all he’d ever wanted.

And in the end it’s what he got, only…not in the way he’d expected.

And it all started with a trip to the principal’s office, the birthplace of the tremendous rivalry that would ensue.


End file.
